Our Mission:

To initiate and coordinate efforts that will enhance, conserve, and protect the natural ecosystems and rural lifestyle of the Clearwater River region for present and future generations.

CRC Goals:

• Build community capacity to resolve issues;
  
• Create opportunities for interaction among citizens, businesses and agencies;
  
• Build common ground by consensus process;
  
• Facilitate timely collection and dissemination of information;
  
• Enhance the understanding of cumulative effects of land management practices; and
  
• Develop and support responsible resource stewardship programs.

Committees:

LAND USE COMMITTEE

WEED COMMITTEE

FOREST HEALTH COMMITTEE

A Brief History of the Clearwater Resource Council:

Reflections on the Formation and Workings of the Clearwater Resource Council ©2006

Work of the Clearwater Resource Council has been featured in several Pathfinder articles. Stan Nicholson, a founding member of the Council, offers the following reflections on the origin and initial work of CRC:
                     .
Sixteen years ago, Colleen and I returned to Montana to live on the Double Arrow Ranch. We soon learned that, although everyone lived in the forest, no one talked about trees. Apparently it was too unpleasant to argue about how trees were being harvested – or not. The Clearwater Resource Council, formed three years ago, has changed that.

As a member of the Council, I have come to appreciate more of what living in a forest means. Seeley Lake is centered in the 250,000 acres of forested lands in the drainage of the Clearwater River. So far, only 4% of the Valley is occupied with lots that have homes or cabins and only another 4% is in non-Plum Creek Timber Company private ownership. Thus, only a small portion of the total acreage of the Valley is occupied by human settlement.

With this relatively small “footprint” in our lovely Valley, Seeley Lake has transformed itself from its early days as a logging camp and a few summer lake homes, to today’s thriving community. The family-owned, Pyramid Lumber sawmill is strong and the economy is increasingly diversified with home building and additional commercial services. The center of town has been “dressed up” and many of our public services have been up-graded.

Historically and even today we depend on the productivity, health and beauty of the forests for our livelihood and day-to-day inspiration, but it took the scare of catastrophic fire to get us talking about trees.

In 2000, when nearly 400,000 acres of forest burned in the Bitterroot Valley, the community of Seeley Lake gathered together to talk about one aspect of living in a forest, the threat of wild fire.

Representatives from six fire fighting agencies, two each from the Forest Service, the State and the local fire districts, came together to write a fire plan for the Clearwater Valley and Swan Valley to our north.  The plan, the first to be drafted in Western Montana, mapped the fire risks and set forest thinning targets for land owners to reduce those risks.

By 2003, our population had grown to about 2,000 permanent residents. Plum Creek Timber Company had harvested most of the merchantable logs from its lands and seemed to be considering divesting itself of some 90,000 acres of timber lands. Authors of the fire plan and others realized that the potential explosion of home building posed as much risk to the community and its rural life style, as catastrophic fire. It was time to expand the discussion.

Seven individuals, most of whom had worked on the fire plan, came together to form the Clearwater Resource Council, a membership organization to provide a place to discuss natural resource management issues and to build community capacity to address those issues.  An initial project of the Council was to work with the fire agencies to craft a fuel reduction program, allocating federal grant assistance to home owners to thin their properties. This effort resulted in the formation of the Seeley Lake Fuels Mitigation Task Force which has obtained over $300,000 in funding to assist private land owners thin their acreage. A second effort has been the work of the noxious weed committee including the publication in the Pathfinder of the article on re-vegetation options following weed reduction and an article on a “new invader” the yellow flag iris.

The Land Use Committee of the CRC helped guide the development of a landscape assessment of the Clearwater valley with 32 accompanying maps and other information. Sources of data for the assessment were described in last week’s Pathfinder story on the technical basis for proposed land use densities. Technical support for the assessment was provided by the professional staff of the Ecosystem Management Research Institute.

The assessment has been presented and discussed with the public at three regular meetings of the CRC. It has also been presented to the Community Council and to the Missoula County Commissioners. Currently, it is being used by the Community Council to anchor the preparation of a land use plan, in cooperation with the county’s planning office.

In effect, the fuel reduction work and the land use plan turn two risks into opportunities. First, thinning the forests provides logs, poles, wood and jobs for woodsman while reducing the risk from wild fires. Second, managing growth can produce continued, modest development of homes in or adjacent to Seeley Lake and our existing neighborhoods. Taken together these actions can produce a safer and stronger community – one that celebrates its trees and deliberates about how to protect its special rural environment.

The CRC will continue to hold open, public meetings on natural resource management issues in the Clearwater Valley at its monthly meetings. New members are welcome.